AMD EPYC is the New AMD Zen Based Server Brand for Naples

AMD Naples has been a major topic in the server industry over the past few months. We previously covered AMD Naples at OCP and during the AMD Tech Day 2017. The reason we are hearing a lot of chatter on AMD Naples is because we know it is going to take a few percent of the x86 server market. Estimates vary wildly, but from what we are hearing in the industry, Intel is going to start losing 1P and 2P server market share for the first time in awhile. AMD EPYC henceforth will be the branding of the AMD Naples data center platform.

AMD EPYC for the Data Center

We are going to have a lot of AMD Ryzen coverage over the coming months. Here is a key summary of the AMD EPYC platform features:

AMD EPYC Naples Platform

Keys here are 1P and 2P server coverage, 8 channel DDR4 memory controllers per CPU, 32 cores / 64 threads per CPU, 64(+) high-speed I/O lanes. From what we are hearing from server vendors, they are looking at the AMD EPYC platform for GPU, NVMe and high memory bandwidth applications.

AMD EPYC Platforms

Here is a sample block diagram of the AMD EPYC platform.

AMD EPYC Naples Server Block Diagram

We have already shown off some of the key features of the AMD EPYC platform, including pictures of the AMD Speedway reference design.

AMD Naples Speedway Internal

Here is the Microsoft OCP server design for AMD Naples:

AMD Naples Project Olympus OCP Server

Final Words

We are excited to see a competitive x86 server in the market. From what we have heard we do not think that AMD is going to address every segment of the market in this generation, but there are some large and growing, segments that need the I/O bandwidth that AMD EPYC offers.

Patrick has been running STH since 2009 and covers a wide variety of SME, SMB, and SOHO IT topics. Patrick is a consultant in the technology industry and has worked with numerous large hardware and storage vendors in the Silicon Valley. The goal of STH is simply to help users find some information about server, storage and networking, building blocks. If you have any helpful information please feel free to post on the forums.